Posted by Matt Wilson on Thursday, September 13, 2001 at 3:07AM :
In Reply to: Re: Excuse the venting posted by Fred Reed on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 at 11:15PM :
Maybe you haven't paid attention. There has been some talk of retaliation today. It has indeed been called an act of war. President Bush has said so, the media has said so, repeatedly.
The reason the newscasters have not focused on retaliation much is because we do not know specifically who to target. It's not like Pearl Harbor, when we knew exactly who attacked us and just where they live. I'm glad folks like you are not in charge when I see that you want to fabricate stories about other countries, just so we can lay the blame on somebody and wipe them out. Granted, Lybia is no friend to us, but if we do as you suggest, the real culprits will sit and laugh and all their supporters will know about it. Their cause will become stronger and they will plan their next moves.
You are probably amongst the same people who gripe, rant and rave when our government and media do discuss upcoming retaliation, saying that we are stupid for disclosing anything relating to it.
You say that we cannot fight them effectively using conventional warfare, and I mostly agree. As you say, remember the USSR experience there.
You also say that bombing a region that is essentially rubble would do no good. Then you turn around and say in your last paragraph that we need to hit back so hard that teeth around the world will rattle. Not using ground forces or bomb/missile attacks leave little choise but weapons of mass destruction. Are you thinking that we should nuke the entire countryside in the Middle East? Well, you may be surprised to find out that we don't even have close to enough nuclear weapons to damage enough of that part of the world to guarantee that we've gotten all the responsible parties. Then they'll really laugh in our faces.....and they'll be back. If we tried such a tactic, we would generate so many new enemies, we would be contending with similar tragedies for decades.
Even if we did have enough nuclear or other mass destruction weapons to obliterate the entire Middle East, we would still create far more enemies than we could hope to deal with.
I agree with you that somehow we may need to make a show, but the most important thing is to take out the responsible parties. In the case of individuals who are not affiliated with a government or military, much of this will require a more quiet approach, as it takes time to infiltrate their closed organizations. Make no mistake: Quiet removal is not spectacular and it does not satisfy our desire for revenge and protection of honor, but no matter how quietly it happens, the entire terrorist world will learn of it and take notice when these people are suddenly gone. It will make it difficult for them to organize anything when their leaders are gone. The approach after these responsible parties are eliminated is to keep an extremely watchful eye over the remaining potential threats, by way of infiltration/espionage. In the case of individuals who plan and carry out this type of activity, destroying a country and planting troops there indefinitely is less of a guarantee that future problems will be minimized. In the case of governments who sponsor this type of activity, I think it is entirely appropriate to launch overt attacks against them and their military.
As for the Israelis, well, there is something to be said for striking back hard, like they do. For one thing it makes us feel better, even if it does little to actually prevent future attacks. I'm not totally opposed to taking out as many know terrorist organizations as possible, but on the other hand you can see how well the Israeli approach has worked for them lately. It is moderately successful at the very best.
You say that those people are more intelligent than we are. I disagree (surprise, surprise). Rushing over to a suspected part of the world and destroying it occupants would be the highly UN-intelligent move to make here. We want to get the people responsible, do we not? If you look at an earlier posting from today, you see a statement that I agree with: Brute force does not gain any country respect, and not necessarily enough fear to maintain control. Intelligently taking out the right people AND all those who assisted in any way at all is the way to curb this sort of thing.
Maybe you've lost, but the rest of us have most certainly not.
Matt
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